one step beyond

You know things are reaching a crisis point when your local subpostmaster starts talking about the end of growth and the importance of building local suppliers so you can keep going when the wholesale food market breaks down!

It is happening out there, there are signs everywhere. Fluctuating oil prices, revolutions, pay freezes, historically low interest rates, long established names vanishing from the high street, sacred cows being slaughtered.

There is, at least amongst thinking people (which excludes by definition politicians), a concensus that growth has finished, probably for good, and the more enlightened among us realise this is due to the end of cheap energy, followed by the reduction in energy of all sorts.

Even Transition cling on to the idea that the future will be different, slower, more community-based but also familiar. We all try to cling on to the idea that most of the things we have now - with the exception of cars and meat - will still exist, but in a  different form - in the future.

But will it? Will we create a network of sustainable electric railways, or will many of them revert to (wood burning) steam? That's quite a change. Will we really generate our own electricity in our homes, or will we learn to live without electricity? Will we still have a network of shops - not supermarkets obviously - or will we all just grow our own food and make our own stuff?

Will the future lay at some point between these two points?

Who knows?

The point I'm trying to make is that the future may be even more different than we imagine, and we need to psych ourselves up for that possibility. It may not be quite as smooth a transitional ride as we hope.

lack of focus

Amazing that the Occupy protest in Bristol is STILL going on.

There is one HUGE problem with Occupy, and it is the reason that the whole thing is falling apart. They have stupidly aligned themselves with the left. The left has a TINY amount of support in the UK, about 1%. So the Occupy movement is doomed from the start for this reason.

And why has Occupy aligned itself with the left? I suspect it is because of the total lack of imagination of the people behind this. They really do believe that this is some sort of crisis of capitalism when the opposite is of course true. The bail out of banks and car companies, insurance and finance set ups was 100% SOCIALIST, in a peculair attempt tp preserve jobs and ailing businesses. Capitalism would never allow this. For capitalism to progress, and if nothing else it is a fantastically progressive economic system, companies that are failing HAVE to close, so that new, leaner businesses can take their place. This is in reality the SECOND CRISIS OF SOCIALISM (the first was the collapse of the Soviet Union of course).

So what Occupy are proposing is more of the same thing that has caused the situation in the first place! This makes them probably the most reactionary and pointless 'protesters' ever seen.

In reality of course there is already a quiet evolution going on as we are faced with zero or falling growth and the end of cheap oil. The true evolutionaries are all involved at different levels in this process. Whether it's restoring closed railways, pushing permaculture, starting cooperatives, building and installing alternative energy set ups, relearning old craft skills or starting community initiatives.

I suspect you've seen the danger here. Believe it or not once, back in the eighties, the Green Party was a genuinely radical party, yet today it is just a watered down version of New Labour, with a tiny patina of green awareness. Result - all the radicals and progressives left. Some of us kept going with proper projects (such as the New S&D), others probably left politics altogether. I have heard that some in Transition are trying to set up a dialogue with Occupy - this would be a disaster if it happened. Occupy's agenda has nothing to do with the future, it is firmly set in old politics (socialism/communism) and assumes that there will always be a strong nanny state providing jobs from cradle to grave (so 1950s!). Occupy is the last fling of the old fogeys, the Empire Loyalists, New Labour, One Nation Tories, the BNP, every half thought out, of it's time, lack of vision 'movement' that was in reality just an agenda thing for a tiny minority interest group.

If Transition, or any other progressive movement, gets tainted by association with Occupy - which will be a laughing stock everywhere within months - it will be finished, which isn't fair.

To conclude, Occupy is simply a last gasp of the old world, a nostalgic hankering back for the big welfare state of the post war time of plenty, a fan club for the Baby Boomers, cornucopians who will refuse to get their hands dirty - in short the chaff that will not survive Peak Oil.

Harsh I know, but can anyone actually prove otherwise?

real action

Guerrilla Gardening

On Sunday 13th December the Transition Bath Food Group will be working on a piece of land in Lansdowne at the top of Park Street. Bring gloves, spades, forks, secateurs. We will start at 10.00 and work for a couple of hours to clear the land. Once this is done we will plant fruit bushes for anyone to harvest. This is one of the many steps we plan to take to plant edible food on spare land in and around Bath. Just turn up and join in. If you want to know more about where it is contact Lynn on 01225 426 039

hope

Well, Obama's in. His inauguration speech wasn't bad at all. He painted a fairly bleak but realistic picture of where the USA currently stands. I suspect the economic picture is worse than any of us feared. In the UK they are projecting 3.4 million unemployed by 2010 - even arch socialist Thatcher couldn't manage that, though I'm sure she tried.

Highlight for me? Yo Yo Ma playing the cello.

I met Yo Yo back in about 1979, on a train from Littlehampton to Chichester. I'd never heard of him, and didn't at the time have much truck with anything other than Joy Division, but at his invitation I did pop along to Chichester cathedral (yes, you read that right! I used to be far less anti-christian) and listened to him play. He was excellent!

What does the new presidency mean? Well, he touched on energy in his speech, and a lot of other things. He certainly didn't proclaim, even in code, that the American Way of Life was not up for Negotiation, quite the opposite. He didn't mention 'growth' once, but he did touch on many non-economic aspects of life. I think this is what we need to hear.

I love business and money, to me the market is king and no better system than capitalism has been, or will ever be, devised. But there's far more to life than making money (which is dead easy) - family, friends, relationships, community, health, culture (not so easy).

We now hear that all 50 states in the US have Transition groups. This is fantastic news, though shouldn't be a surprise. That's part of the process of creating a new USA, a USA that wll lead the world on Climate Change, social justice and energy security, that will send socialism running to the caves of Pakistan, the conservative clubs of middle England and the ghettoes of Gaza.

More than anything Barack is a symbol that racism is finally dead, that you can emerge from any background to high office, and that the world really has changed. Now let's gid rid of Brown - what a joke he now seems!